Notes

People will look back on this era in our history to see what was known about Donald Trump while Americans were deciding whether to choose him as president. Here’s a running chronicle from James Fallows on the evidence available to voters as they make their choice, and of how Trump has broken the norms that applied to previous major-party candidates. (For a Fallows-led, ongoing reader discussion on Trump’s rise to the presidency, see “Trump Nation.”)

Famous NBC news photo of Donald Trump’s longtime physician Dr. Harold Bornstein, who certified that a President Trump would be “unequivocally the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” Trump is now suggesting that Hillary Clinton might be abusing drugs. NBC

To a first order of approximation, everything that Donald Trump has said about his opponents should be understood as projection, in the psychological sense of the term. That is, any defect Trump has complained about in his primary or general-election opponents, is more likely to seem an obvious flaw in himself.

Trump called Ted Cruz “Lyin’ Ted,” and Cruz has his moments. But no other politician of any party approaches Trump’s level of nonstop falsehood on matters large and small. Trump says that Hillary Clinton is secretive and scheming, and she too has her moments. But no other modern politician has matched Trump’s secrecy about his business operations or his taxes. He is hyper-attentive to other people’s weight gains, but is quite pudgy himself. On through the list, as an AP story has usefully catalogued: Trump has said that Hillary Clinton is turning the campaign negative through personal attacks rather than policy. That she’s skating through without offering substantive details. That she’s race-baiting and dividing the country. That she is not as respectful of women as he is. That there’s something wrong with her physical and mental health. And, most of all, that she has bad judgment and a risky temperament.

Whether these and related attacks are a shrewd preemptive strategy against Clinton (“She’s going to say I don’t know policy, so let’s get to her first!”) or simple reflexive “projection” in the classic sense, I can’t say. (My guess, of course, is the latter.) Either way, after the election I think we’ll look back to see the striking correlation between the flaws Trump calls out in his adversaries, and the flaws everyone else sees in him.

***

With that buildup, here is the latest what the hell? moment from the Trump campaign: his suggestion today in New Hampshire that the candidates take a drug test before the third and final presidential debate. As reported in the NYT:

Escalating his criticism of Hillary Clinton’s debate performances [JF note: And just think about this itself as an example of projection] Donald J. Trump came to a state battling a drug epidemic and suggested without any evidence Saturday that his opponent had been on drugs during their second debate. ...

He continued: “We should take a drug test prior, because I don’t know what’s going on with her. But at the beginning of her last debate — she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, ‘Oh, take me down.’ She could barely reach her car.”

What???

I have no grounds for suggesting that Trump himself needs to be tested for drugs. But if anyone were to suggest that, wild claims like this would be part of the case.

Now 23 days and a few hours until the election. Still no tax information forthcoming from the man with the most problematic financial history of any major-party nominee in modern history. And, we can’t say it often enough, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and most of the existing GOP establishment are all still saying: This man should become commander-in-chief.

No he should not, and they should be held accountable for what they are trying to do.

Update A reader who is a lawyer on the east coast writes in about the “projection” hypothesis:

The projection theory is interesting. What I can’t tell is to what extent Trump is aware that he’s just throwing feces against the wall. How much of this does he believe—rigged election, international media conspiracy, Hilary belongs in jail, etc. To what extent does he believe that attacking the looks of his various accusers is a sound strategy? How delusional is he?

I think it’s impossible to tell. An obviously undisciplined guy, ever since the first debate he’s become completely unhinged, making just about every bad choice he could make in his campaign, shaking off the advice of the campaign professionals, listening to Bannon and the other hardcore crowd (and it’s not clear that they care about winning as much as they care about trashing Hillary).

It’s impossible to tell if he thinks he actually has a reasonable chance to win this election. It appears than none of the GOP “leadership” thinks he can win, the major polls indicate he can’t, the big GOP funders have walked away.

There is a real possibility that what we are seeing with Trump now is mental breakdown, but again, it’s impossible to tell if that’s what’s going on or what we’re seeing is his sociopathic character coming out as the setbacks and pressures mount.

I understand the dilemma that Ryan and the other GOP elected officials and RNC officials face. But at what point, if any, are they obligated to disavow Trump? Perhaps their thinking is that they don’t need to court this sort of controversy within their party, since he’s going to lose anyway.

As noted before, I’m wary of speculating about whether what we’re seeing from Trump amounts to some kind of diagnosable mental disorder. Obviously I couldn’t presume to judge from a distance, and fundamentally it doesn’t matter. Whatever the explanation, his words and actions are unacceptable.

It’s also clear to me that the entire Republican establishment now assumes (and probably hopes) that he is going to lose. Maybe that makes their endorsement of him less damaging: it’s not going to make any difference. But I still think it’s squalid. This is as clear a test of country-before-party as any of us has seen in our lifetimes. And I think the Republican establishment will regret the choice so many of its members are making now.

These women, at a rally in Charlotte this evening, are for Donald Trump. Most female American voters are not.Mike Segar / Reuters

Seven days ago, back in the innocent times of early October, I began installment #132 with this paragraph, in its entirety: “Good God.”

That was a few hours after the release (by the Washington Post) of Donald Trump’s now-historic “You can do anything you want” tape. It was one day before some of his GOP supporters began peeling off. It was two days before Trump flatly denied, at the town hall-style second presidential debate, that he had ever “kissed women without consent or groped women without consent.” And it was before the stream of subsequent-day events in which more and more women have come forward to say that in fact he had kissed or groped them; before Trump essentially declared war on the GOP establishment (along with the press and most other institutions); before members of that same GOP establishment retracted their criticism of Trump and crawled back to support him; and before Trump responded to sexual-assault allegations by saying, in effect, that these losers (including Hillary Clinton) aren’t hot enough for him to have bothered with.

I have been offline for three days, for work and family events in in Erie, Pennsylvania, and San Francisco, and now I see that several dozen items’ worth of Time Capsule material has piled up! So I’ve already used the “Good God” chit and am left just to say: only 24 days to go.

And to mention these reactions or analyses that deserve notice:

1. “Why we shouldn’t forgive the Republicans who sold their souls.” That’s the title of a WaPo essay this week by Robert Kagan. He’s someone I’ve disagreed with for years, mainly on foreign policy, and expect to disagree with again. But I have to respect his courage and clarity in laying out the case that Donald Trump’s defects transcend any routine disagreement over policy or values. (Similarly I’ve come to respect the principle-above-party anti-Trump stands of others with whom I’ve differed on nearly everything else, including Max Boot, Bret Stephens, Jennifer Rubin, and Michael Gerson.)

Everyone knows that the Republican party is having operational problems. But the real problem, Kagan says, is not that the party is not falling apart. Rather it’s that the party is holding together, in support for a candidate its leaders know beyond doubt would be a grave danger in office.

Robert Kagan begins his case about failure of responsibility this way:

Of the remarkable things we have learned this election year, the most significant is that the current Republican Party is unfit to lead the country. It has failed the greatest test a political leader or party can face, and failed spectacularly. It has abandoned its principles out of a combination of cowardice and opportunism. It has worked to place in the White House the most dangerous threat to U.S. democracy since the Civil War. ...

These are the people we’re supposed to put in charge of the House and Senate for another two years? Whom we’re then supposed to rally behind in the battle for the White House in 2020? No. Not this group. We know too much. We know all we need to know.

The whole thing is worth reading. Paul Ryan and others in the GOP establishment will try to forget all this starting on November 9. The rest of us should remember.

***

2. Can’t tell your Trump lineup without a scorecard. As noted back in installment #134, Daniel Nichanian of the University of Chicago has been keeping a running update of the elected GOP officials in several groups: those who “criticize” Trump but still endorse him (the “full Ryan”), those who actually have un-endorsed him, and those who withdrew support after last week’s tape but, incredibly, have crawled back. This last inglorious group includes two plains-state senators—Deb Fischer of Nebraska and John Thune of South Dakota—and two representatives, Bradley Byrne of Alabama and Scott Garrett of New Jersey. The NYT had a story on the crawlback phenomenon, here. And a reader wrote about the illogic of their stance:

Of the many contradictions Republicans are caught in, one less obvious one is the claim that they can manage Trump once he is in office, so vote Trump because Supreme Court or taxes or something. And yet these are the same people cowering in fear of his base. I am sure their spines will regenerate in the warm light of a presidential victory, making them adequate to the task of containing Trump.

***

3. Michelle Obama speaks. You have probably heard about the power of the first lady’s speech, in New Hampshire, on the implications of Donald Trump’s sexual-assault rhetoric and behavior.

I just saw a clip of the speech now. It truly is remarkable and deserves notice. You can read about it in the WaPo here and NY Mag here. An online video is here. “This isn’t about politics. It’s about basic human decency.” When people talk about the bully pulpit, this is the kind of thing they have in mind.

***

4. See you in court. After the NYT ran a story quoting two women who said that Donald Trump had groped, ogled, or kissed them, Trump’s lawyers issued an immediate demand for retraction.

The response from David McCraw, the lawyer speaking for the NYT, is a thing of beauty. You can read it here. It ends this way:

We did what the law allows: We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern. If Mr. Trump disagrees, if he believes that American citizens had no right to hear what those women had to say and that the law of this country forces us and those who would dare to criticize him to stand silent or be punished, we welcome the opportunity to have a court set him straight.

***

5. The intel community despairs, again. I’ve mentioned in previous installments that a long line of former CIA directors and other intel veterans have warned against Donald Trump in office, and that Trump has already abused the confidence of briefers who have updated him on world trouble spots.

Now the WaPo carries a story on intel-veterans’ concern that Trump is dismissing out of hand all evidence that Russian officialdom is trying to meddle directly in the 2016 U.S. election:

The former officials, who have served presidents in both parties, say they were bewildered when Trump cast doubt on Russia’s role after receiving a classified briefing on the subject and again after an unusually blunt statement from U.S. agencies saying they were “confident” that Moscow had orchestrated the attacks.

“It defies logic,” retired Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said of Trump’s pronouncements. ...

“He seems to ignore their advice,” Hayden said. “Why would you assume this would change when he is in office?”

To say it again: Nothing remotely like any of this has happened before. And still Paul Ryan and the GOP establishment say, Let’s make this man president! Remember that on November 8, and long afterward.

The nominee greeting his people last night in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.Mike Segar / Reuters

One of the few “genteel” aspects of the Republican convention in Cleveland three months ago was Donald Trump’s response, in his acceptance speech, to the boisterous chants of “Lock her up!” that were rising from the crowd. In the opening days of the convention, I heard that chant frequently from crowds outside and inside the arena, alternating with two cruder variants: “String her up!” and “Trump that bitch!”

When the familiar “Lock her up!” cheers began midway during Trump’s big speech, he handled them with what seemed at the time to be very shrewd aplomb. He let the chants run for a few seconds. He gave his in-on-the-joke smile, Ah, I know what you mean!. He paused dramatically, and then he stepped in, responsible-parent style, and switched the verb in a way respectful of democratic procedure: “Let’s … defeat her in November.” You can see the moment at the end of this clip. Much of the rest of the speech was a primary-election-style appeal to the base. But when I heard this passage I thought: wow, maybe he can shift his tone.

Rick Wilking / Reuters

That was then. Two nights ago at the debate, Trump made his famous “you’d be in jail” comment, which in substantive terms was the most important moment in the debate. (In terms of imagery and symbolism, the most important moment came when Trump loomed menacingly close to Clinton. I will bet anything that the picture of him doing so, at right, is the image with which we remember the debates and the campaign as a whole.) But “you’d be in jail” was itself a shocking departure from two centuries’ worth of political norms, for reasons Yoni Appelbaum explains here.

And last night, at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Trump had had enough of “Let’s defeat her.” The crowd chanted “Lock her up! Lock her up!” And the man who would be president said, “Yeah, ‘Lock her up’ is right!”

Nothing like this has happened before. No one like this has come so close to power in the United States. Four weeks from tonight we’ll know how close he came.

The standard throughout this Time Capsule series has been: what is happening in this Age of Trump that has not happened before in our politics.

Without further elaboration, the outbreak of full-on war between the Republican nominee and the Republican establishment is unlike anything anyone has previously seen. The only possible comparisons illustrate the extremity of what is underway. Those would be the onset of the Civil War, which of course exceeds all other strains in America’s long history, and the idiosyncratic politics that led to a temporary Republican/Bull Moose split in 1912.

Donald Trump’s war on the party that nominated him is a reminder of the institutional nihilism that is at the heart of everything he stands for and does. He believes in himself: “I alone can save you.” He believes in his immediate family. He appears to believe in the greater Trump organization. As for the rest—courts, treaties, tax codes, norms, any idea of the civic or the public—it’s tabula rasa.

Every inaugural speech, by every one of the first 44 U.S. presidents, has struck the theme of peaceful transfer of power, and a regard for institutions whose health and integrity transcend even the deepest political disagreements. The gravest challenge to U.S. institutions obviously occurred as the 16th president, greatest of them all, was being sworn in. Donald Trump now seems very unlikely to become the 45th occupant of the office. He is making it clearer by the moment why he would be so dangerous in command.

More to come on the institutional theme as time permits. The main challenge is keeping up with the flow of material. And I leave you to reflect on the implications of Trump’s word “shackles” in the tweet at the top of this post—rather than “limits,” “constraints,” “gloves,” or even “hobbles.”

I may have to adjust the standard sign-off line for the hallowed Time Capsule™ series.

The usual approach is to note how many days are left until the election—as I write, it’s just 28 days and a few hours—and offer two reminders. The first is that Donald Trump still has not released his tax forms, although he effectively conceded last night that he has paid no federal income tax for years. The second is that the Republican establishment, from Speaker of the House Paul Ryan on down, has not budged from its endorsement of Trump. He’s fine! Let’s make him the most powerful man in the world!

The Ryanesque elegance here is that the party’s senior elected official in the country will no longer “defend” its nominee for president—but he still endorses him. As noted earlier: Trump is a monster! Vote for Trump!

“In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” Jane Goodall, the anthropologist, told me shortly before Trump won the GOP nomination. “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”

In her book My Life With the Chimpanzees, Goodall told the story of “Mike,” a chimp who maintained his dominance by kicking a series of kerosene cans ahead of him as he moved down a road, creating confusion and noise that made his rivals flee and cower. She told me she would be thinking of Mike as she watched the upcoming debates.

During the first debate, when Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump stayed at their assigned lecterns, we didn’t see this as much. Last night, the scenes that Goodall was imagining played out before our eyes: Trump looming up behind Clinton, walking very close into what we’d normally consider her “personal space,” emphasizing the fact that he is physically so much larger than she is. Here is a short GIF of him moving in on her.

But you don’t have to believe me, or her. No less an authority than Nigel Farage, Brexit-campaign leader in the U.K. and now enthusiastic Trump backer, gave an interview in the spin room in which he said that Trump “looked like a big silverback gorilla”—and meant it as a compliment. “He is that big alpha male. The leader of the pack!”

My guess is no, as it replays and sinks in. As a reminder: Trump cannot win just with his revved-up GOP primary base. He needs to attract new supporters, especially from the groups where he now is dramatically weak: among women, non-whites, young people, and highly educated people. Back in her 2000 race for the U.S. Senate from New York, polls suggested that Hillary Clinton was significantly helped rather than hurt when her opponent Rick Lazio did a very mild version of the alpha-male move by walking over very close to her during a debate. Al Gore apparently also lost support by walking up close to George W. Bush during one of their presidential debates that same year. Neither of those amounted to anything, compared with what we saw last night.

I’ll see whether Jane Goodall is within communication range this week, for after-action analysis of what we all saw. For now, I’m betting that it’s one more strike against Trump. Nigel Farage, who can’t vote anyway, is all the more enthusiastic. The majority-female U.S. electorate? There I bet it hurts.

This is a gorilla rather than a chimpanzee, but you get the point:

A dominant male Western Gorilla, at the Melbourne Zoo (Macinate, via Wikimedia)

I think I have taken off half my remaining life expectancy in the process, but I watched the second debate this evening and did a million-item tweetstorm in real time. Actually, only 97 items, which you can see in numbered sequence starting here.

But there is one item that genuinely has not occurred before in modern presidential politics, and that in my view deserves genuine outrage. That was Trump’s comment about 30 minutes in that if he were president, Hillary Clinton would be in jail. Here’s one of the YouTube clips I’ve found:

This is wrong. You cannot say this. This is the way tinhorn cult-of-the-personality despotisms work. The fact that this came out immediately and spontaneously from Trump, like his “that makes me smart!” comment about paying no taxes and unlike his memorized “oh, that was locker room talk” responses about his sex tape, makes it more revealing.

Howard Stern, with sidekick Jackie Martling, in the late 1990s, when Donald Trump was a frequent guest on his raunchy show.Peter Morgan / Reuters

Some recordings of Donald Trump’s appearances on the Howard Stern show from the 1990s onward are already famous. That is where Trump said in 2002 “I guess so” when Stern asked if invading Iraq was a good idea. It’s also where Trump said that avoiding sexually transmitted diseases had been “my own personal Vietnam,” that Miss Universe Alicia Machado was “an eating machine,” and so on.

Now Andrew Kaczynski, who wrote about many of these recordings while at BuzzFeed, and colleagues Chris Massie and Nate McDermott at his new home of CNN, have put together a collection of additional Trump-Stern interviews. They’re quite something, starting with numerous lascivious Trump comments about his daughter Ivanka. (For instance: “Can I say this? A piece of ass,” Stern asks about Ivanka. “Yeah,” her father replies.)

Here’s the significant point about this collection—actually, two. The first is that concentrating them in one place has surprising power. Look through, and you’ll see what I mean. The second bears on Trump’s claim in his “apology” video last night that “these words [“grab by the pussy” etc] don’t reflect who I am.” In fact, the evidence suggests that they reflect exactly who he is.

***

Bonus reading: Virginia Heffernan has a wonderful essay in Politico about how Howard Stern knew just what he was doing in these interviews with Trump, and how he lured, goaded, and especially flattered him into what Stern knew would be outrageous statements. When reading this, I could not help thinking of the way Vladimir Putin has also, through flattery, expertly played Trump.

Also, a reader points out a connection I missed. Trump’s initial excuse for “I can do anything I want” is that it was “locker-room” talk—something just between the guys. But the reader points out that as recently as installment #126, I had reported on a very public case of Trump behaving in almost as vulgar a way, to which I was an indirect witness myself. I’d already lost track of that, in the fog of war.

***

For the time-capsule record I need to point out: No, nothing like this has ever happened before. Also: still Paul Ryan is saying, even as other Republicans bail out: He’s fine! Vote for Trump!

This is a day unlike any other I recall in many decades of watching and being involved in politics. The only possible comparison would be the tumult of the 1968 presidential campaign, and of the year 1968 in general. But the driving events back then were historically tragic (RFK, MLK, Tet and My Lai, and much more) rather than just squalid. Or perhaps the final stage of Richard Nixon’s Watergate downfall, though even in his failings Nixon was a vastly more serious figure than the showman Trump.

So this stands on its own.

In fast-moving circumstances, it’s challenging to keep track of which prominent Republicans are in which groups:

(a) Those who have been against Trump for a while, a very small group notably including Gov. Kasich and Sen. Flake;

(b) Those who were fine with Trump through “Mexican judge” and “I’d like to hear her say something” and “Build the wall!” and the tax returns and the foundation fraud and all the rest, but now are against him, for instance Sen. Ayotte; and

(c) Those who say they’re sickened and offended and distraught and generally regusted by Trump’s latest comments, but still think he should become president. This position is known as “the full Ryan,” in honor of the senior Republican elected official, House Speaker Paul Ryan. It includes most GOP members of the Senate and House plus governors.

As a very useful guide, Daniel Nichanian, of the University of Chicago, has prepared an online spreadsheet showing currently serving GOP officials in each of these groups and some others. You can see the list, which he’s quickly updating, at this link, which I’m sharing with his permission.

Below is a sample screenshot as of 2 p.m. EDT today, October 8. The real thing is larger and more legible.

Angela Lansbury and Laurence Harvey in The Manchurian Candidate, in 1962. That movie, and the Richard Condon novel it was drawn from, imagined foreign attempts to direct the outcome of a U.S. presidential election. Yesterday the U.S. government said that Russian hackers have been deliberately trying to change the outcome of this year's race.Wikimedia commons

Here are some things that happened yesterday that in any other election year would have been major developments in themselves. But yesterday, October 7, the Day of the Tape, most didn’t even make news programs:

1. Russia trying to tamper with the election. That is what the U.S. government has come out and claimed, for instance via a WaPo story with the headline, “U.S. government officially accuses Russia of hacking campaign to interfere with elections.” Sample:

“The U.S. intelligence community is confident that the Russian government directed the recent compromises of e-mails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations,” said a joint statement from the two agencies. “These thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process.”...

“Today was just the first step,” said Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), a member of the homeland security committee. ... “Moscow orchestrated these hacks because [Russian President Vladimir]Putin believes Soviet-style aggression is worth it. The United States must upend Putin’s calculus with a strong diplomatic, political, cyber and economic response.”

The possible Russian interference would range from something that’s already happened (the hacks of DNC and other email accounts, with releases timed for political damage); to something that might be happening now (interference with registration rolls); to something really alarming (directly tampering with election-night results); to something even worse. That worst-of-all prospect is seeding long-term doubt about the legitimacy of the election itself. Of course this is ground that Trump himself has shamelessly prepared with his “It’s all rigged!” talk from early on (for instance, see installment #68).

Other countries have always had interests in the outcome of U.S. elections. For decades historians have suspected (and recently may have confirmed) that Richard Nixon’s 1968 campaign secretly worked with the South Vietnamese government to torpedo peace talks to end the Vietnam war, in hopes of further damaging Hubert Humphrey’s campaign. The Manchurian Candidate, as a novel in the late 1950s and a movie in the early 1960s, was about Soviet/Chinese rigging of a U.S. election. And of course the U.S. has long interfered in other countries’ politics.

But nothing like this level of attempted interference in U.S. elections has been suggested before. This is new. If it were not for everything else, it would be major news, and it deserves real attention whenever the political version of the O.J. chase is over.

2. The Central Park Five. Back in 1989, five black and Latino teenagers were convicted of raping and beating nearly to death a white woman in her 20s who was jogging in Central Park. The case was known as the Central Park Five, and it was one of Donald Trump’s first forays into the realm of “public policy” issues. His position, as stated in a famous full-page ad, was that the five were all guilty and should be put to death.

Members of the group were indeed convicted; they served many years in prison; and then, in 2002, they were all proven to be innocent. Someone else confessed to the crime, and DNA evidence established that the original five had nothing to do with the crime.

What’s significant here, apart from the obvious miscarriage of justice and the years of their lives these people spent behind bars? It distills several traits that are so familiar from Trump, and would be so dangerous in a president:

Rush to judgment (as noted in installments #26 and #129, Trump is instantly and absolutely sure about matters where the evidence is still murky, and where wiser people suspend judgment); prideful and pigheaded refusal to admit error (as pointed out yesterday by Vox, CNN, and my colleague Matt Ford, Trump even now refuses to apologize to the Five, after they have been conclusively cleared and the City of New York has paid them millions in atonement); racism (this was a classic “menace from urban thugs” episode, which Trump did his best to inflame).

In normal years, a nominee would have to say something about his refusal to apologize to innocent people, who if he had his way might have been put to death. This year it hardly makes the cut.

***

3. Why should I practice for the second debate, when I did such a great job at the first one? Just read this story, also in Vox, about how Trump has approached the task of preparing for something he has never done before: a one-on-one town hall-style debate. Good lord. Unlike many other items in the past 36 hours, this is not disqualifying in any ethical or civic sense. But it suggests someone who lacks even the faintest grasp of the hard work that is required for the actual job of being president.

***

So much more has happened in the past 24 hours, which at the moment seems likely to be marked as the day Trump’s chances to become president came to an end. But this is all I can stand right now.

And for this reminder: For a number of Trump’s supporters, even a video like this will bounce right off their backs. What about Benghazi? And what do you expect from the crooked lamestream media? But to win, Trump needs to attract support beyond his base—notably from women, non-whites, educated people, and young people. So each day’s news should be judged on whether it attracts any of those people to his side. Take your own guess about the effect of The Tape.

Thirty-one days and a few hours to go.

Update: Donald Trump, GOP nominee, has responded:

“This was locker room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Bill Clinton has said far worse to me on the golf course—not even close. I apologize if anyone was offended.”

For what it’s worth, I’ve been in locker rooms (though not on golf courses) and never had conversations like this.

No, William Weld didn't become president. This appearance at the White House, in 1997, was after Bill Clinton nominated him as Ambassador to Mexico--and Senator Jesse Helms, like Weld a Republican, stonewalled until Weld withdrew. Now Weld is back in national politics and making an interesting move.Reuters

On the state of the race, with two days until the next Clinton-Trump debate and 31 days until the election:

I’m not aware of anything like this happening previously in elections of the modern era.

2) Weld Wavers. Bill Weld is the former Republican governor of Massachusetts and the current Libertarian party vice-presidential nominee. He can’t be enjoying the serial self-embarrassments by his running mate, Republican former governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. A story in the Boston Globe (following this very nice Atlantic profile by Molly Ball) says that Weld is deciding to spend the next 31 days doing something different from the standard third-party argument that Both Major Parties Are Flawed. Instead he’ll be saying, Donald Trump Must Be Stopped, which in the real world means support for Hillary Clinton.

To see how unusual this is, contrast it with Jill Stein’s tone this year; or Ralph Nader’s in his many runs, especially 2000; or George Wallace in 1968, when his trademarked phrase was that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between the two major parties.

3) He said, He said. CNN has put up a very tough, let’s-cut-the-BS video, which contrasts clips of Mike Pence staunchly denying that Donald Trump had ever made certain outrageous comments, with clips of Trump saying exactly those outrageous things.

Every campaign has its half-truths or worse, as does every candidate. Fact-checkers will never lack for business. But I’m not aware of anything comparable to the Trump (and in this case Pence) pattern of blithely saying so many things, so often, that they know can be so easily disproved. It takes us back to Trump’s old claim that the NFL had sent him a letter complaining about debate scheduling, and the NFL immediately saying: No we didn’t! It’s something different, in its volume and brazenness, than “political lies” as we have known them before.

I’m trying to note, in real time, the people who are standing up against Trump. It will be worth remembering the many figures who have enabled him.

***

Bonus #4) Photos. Hillary Clinton appears in ads with nearly everyone who has held office or been popular in the Democratic firmament. Barack Obama. Michelle Obama. John Kerry. Elizabeth Warren. Bernie Sanders! Of course her husband. Purportedly soon Al Gore. Any Democratic senator or governor in any state she is visiting.

As best I can tell, only two “national level” in-office GOP politicians other than Mike Pence appear in photos with Trump. One, of course, is the sad Gov. Chris Christie. The other is the true believer Sen. Jeff Sessions. And let’s not forget Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

But while I have been trying to shame the likes of Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz (!), John McCain, and now Jon Huntsman for endorsing Trump, it’s remarkable that you just don’t find them in the same camera frame with him.

If anyone has found actual photos of Donald Trump with in-office politicians, including supporters like Ryan, please let me know!

After a year of uncertainty and unhappiness, the president is reportedly feeling more comfortable—but has he really mastered the job?

It was a fun weekend for Donald Trump. Late on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the outgoing FBI deputy director whom Trump had long targeted, and the president spent the rest of the weekend taking victory laps: cheering McCabe’s departure, taking shots at his former boss and mentor James Comey, and renewing his barrage against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s moods shift quickly, but over the last week or so, a different overarching feel has manifested itself, a meta-mood. Although he remains irritated by Mueller and any number of other things, Trump seems to be relishing the latest sound of chaos, “leaning into the maelstrom,” as McKay Coppins put it Friday. This is rooted, Maggie Haberman reports, in a growing confidence on the president’s part: “A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.”

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop that includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law-enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

Middle-class African American families aren’t spending as much on groceries as white families, and the reason isn’t a lack of money, but a lack of options.

Rich Americans spend their money differently than poor Americans—no great surprise there. But the differences in how families spend go beyond earnings. For instance, rich white families spend more on entertainment and groceries than rich black families. And black families at all income levels spend more on things that require a long-term contract, such as electricity and heating services, than white families at corresponding income levels.

These discrepancies illustrate an under-recognized aspect of racial inequality: Blacks don’t just tend to earn less than whites. Even when they earn as much, they seem to still have less access to goods and services than their white peers do.

That’s the finding of a paper by the sociologists Raphaël Charron-Chénier, Joshua J. Fink, and Lisa A. Keister of Duke University, who used data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to assess the spending habits of white and black households in 2013 and 2014. They argue that access to credit, retail deserts, and discrimination could be major factors in why blacks spend less, in aggregate, than whites. Only one of these challenges—access to credit—is mitigated when black families earn more money.

For years, the restaurateur played a jerk with a heart of gold. Now, he’s the latest celebrity chef to be accused of sexual harassment.

“There’s no way—no offense—but a girl shouldn’t be at the same level that I am.”

That was Mike Isabella, celebrity chef and successful restaurateur, making his debut on the show that would make him famous. Bravo’s Top Chef, to kick off its Las Vegas–set Season 6, had pitted its new group of contestants against each other in a mise-en-place relay race; Isabella, shucking clams, had looked over and realized to his great indignation that Jen Carroll, a sous chef at New York’s iconic Le Bernardin, was doing the work more quickly than he was.

Top Chef is a simmering stew of a show—one that blends the pragmatic testing of culinary artistry with reality-TV sugar and reality-TV spice—and Isabella quickly established himself as Season 6’s pseudo-villain: swaggering, macho, quick to anger, and extremely happy to insult his fellow contestants, including Carroll and, soon thereafter, Robin Leventhal (a self-taught chef and cancer survivor). Isabella was a villain, however, who was also, occasionally, self-effacing. A little bit bumbling. Aw, shucks, quite literally. He would later explain, of the “same level” comment:

After a year of uncertainty and unhappiness, the president is reportedly feeling more comfortable—but has he really mastered the job?

It was a fun weekend for Donald Trump. Late on Friday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the outgoing FBI deputy director whom Trump had long targeted, and the president spent the rest of the weekend taking victory laps: cheering McCabe’s departure, taking shots at his former boss and mentor James Comey, and renewing his barrage against Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Trump’s moods shift quickly, but over the last week or so, a different overarching feel has manifested itself, a meta-mood. Although he remains irritated by Mueller and any number of other things, Trump seems to be relishing the latest sound of chaos, “leaning into the maelstrom,” as McKay Coppins put it Friday. This is rooted, Maggie Haberman reports, in a growing confidence on the president’s part: “A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him.”

How evangelicals, once culturally confident, became an anxious minority seeking political protection from the least traditionally religious president in living memory

One of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

Trump’s background and beliefs could hardly be more incompatible with traditional Christian models of life and leadership. Trump’s past political stances (he once supported the right to partial-birth abortion), his character (he has bragged about sexually assaulting women), and even his language (he introduced the words pussy and shithole into presidential discourse) would more naturally lead religious conservatives toward exorcism than alliance. This is a man who has cruelly publicized his infidelities, made disturbing sexual comments about his elder daughter, and boasted about the size of his penis on the debate stage. His lawyer reportedly arranged a $130,000 payment to a porn star to dissuade her from disclosing an alleged affair. Yet religious conservatives who once blanched at PG-13 public standards now yawn at such NC-17 maneuvers. We are a long way from The Book of Virtues.

Invented centuries ago in France, the bidet has never taken off in the States. That might be changing.

“It’s been completely Americanized!” my host declares proudly. “The bidet is gone!” In my time as a travel editor, this scenario has become common when touring improvements to hotels and resorts around the world. My heart sinks when I hear it. To me, this doesn’t feel like progress, but prejudice.

Americans seem especially baffled by these basins. Even seasoned American travelers are unsure of their purpose: One globe-trotter asked me, “Why do the bathrooms in this hotel have both toilets and urinals?” And even if they understand the bidet’s function, Americans often fail to see its appeal. Attempts to popularize the bidet in the United States have failed before, but recent efforts continue—and perhaps they might even succeed in bringing this Old World device to new backsides.

A new six-part Netflix documentary is a stunning dive into a utopian religious community in Oregon that descended into darkness.

To describe Wild Wild Country as jaw-dropping is to understate the number of times my mouth gaped while watching the series, a six-part Netflix documentary about a religious community in Oregon in the 1980s. It’s ostensibly the story of how a group led by the dynamic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh purchased 64,000 acres of land in central Oregon in a bid to build its own utopian city. But, as the series immediately reveals, the narrative becomes darker and stranger than you might ever imagine. It’s a tale that mines the weirdness of the counterculture in the ’70s and ’80s, the age-old conflict between rural Americans and free love–preaching cityfolk, and the emotional vacuum that compels people to interpret a bearded mystic as something akin to a god.

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

Last May, TheWashington Post’s James Hohmann noted “an uncovered dynamic” that helped explain the GOP’s failure to repeal Obamacare. Three current Democratic House members had opposed the Affordable Care Act when it first passed. Twelve Democratic House members represent districts that Donald Trump won. Yet none voted for repeal. The “uncovered dynamic,” Hohmann suggested, was Nancy Pelosi’s skill at keeping her party in line.

She’s been keeping it in line for more than a decade. In 2005, George W. Bush launched his second presidential term with an aggressive push to partially privatize Social Security. For nine months, Republicans demanded that Democrats admit the retirement system was in crisis and offer their own program to change it. Pelosi refused. Democratic members of Congress hosted more than 1,000 town-hall meetings to rally opposition to privatization. That fall, Republicans backed down, and Bush’s second term never recovered.

Among the more practical advice that can be offered to international travelers is wisdom of the bathroom. So let me say, as someone who recently returned from China, that you should be prepared to one, carry your own toilet paper and two, practice your squat.

I do not mean those goofy chairless sits you see at the gym. No, toned glutes will not save you here. I mean the deep squat, where you plop your butt down as far as it can go while staying aloft and balanced on the heels. This position—in contrast to deep squatting on your toes as most Americans naturally attempt instead—is so stable that people in China can hold it for minutes and perhaps even hours ...

As the Trump presidency approaches a troubling tipping point, it’s time to find the right term for what’s happening to democracy.

Here is something that, even on its own, is astonishing: The president of the United States demanded the firing of the former FBI deputy director, a career civil servant, after tormenting him both publicly and privately—and it worked.

The American public still doesn’t know in any detail what Andrew McCabe, who was dismissed late Friday night, is supposed to have done. But citizens can see exactly what Donald Trump did to McCabe. And the president’s actions are corroding the independence that a healthy constitutional democracy needs in its law enforcement and intelligence apparatus.

McCabe’s firing is part of a pattern. It follows the summary removal of the previous FBI director and comes amid Trump’s repeated threats to fire the attorney general, the deputy attorney, and the special counsel who is investigating him and his associates. McCabe’s ouster unfolded against a chaotic political backdrop that includes Trump’s repeated calls for investigations of his political opponents, demands of loyalty from senior law-enforcement officials, and declarations that the job of those officials is to protect him from investigation.

Middle-class African American families aren’t spending as much on groceries as white families, and the reason isn’t a lack of money, but a lack of options.

Rich Americans spend their money differently than poor Americans—no great surprise there. But the differences in how families spend go beyond earnings. For instance, rich white families spend more on entertainment and groceries than rich black families. And black families at all income levels spend more on things that require a long-term contract, such as electricity and heating services, than white families at corresponding income levels.

These discrepancies illustrate an under-recognized aspect of racial inequality: Blacks don’t just tend to earn less than whites. Even when they earn as much, they seem to still have less access to goods and services than their white peers do.

That’s the finding of a paper by the sociologists Raphaël Charron-Chénier, Joshua J. Fink, and Lisa A. Keister of Duke University, who used data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey to assess the spending habits of white and black households in 2013 and 2014. They argue that access to credit, retail deserts, and discrimination could be major factors in why blacks spend less, in aggregate, than whites. Only one of these challenges—access to credit—is mitigated when black families earn more money.

For years, the restaurateur played a jerk with a heart of gold. Now, he’s the latest celebrity chef to be accused of sexual harassment.

“There’s no way—no offense—but a girl shouldn’t be at the same level that I am.”

That was Mike Isabella, celebrity chef and successful restaurateur, making his debut on the show that would make him famous. Bravo’s Top Chef, to kick off its Las Vegas–set Season 6, had pitted its new group of contestants against each other in a mise-en-place relay race; Isabella, shucking clams, had looked over and realized to his great indignation that Jen Carroll, a sous chef at New York’s iconic Le Bernardin, was doing the work more quickly than he was.

Top Chef is a simmering stew of a show—one that blends the pragmatic testing of culinary artistry with reality-TV sugar and reality-TV spice—and Isabella quickly established himself as Season 6’s pseudo-villain: swaggering, macho, quick to anger, and extremely happy to insult his fellow contestants, including Carroll and, soon thereafter, Robin Leventhal (a self-taught chef and cancer survivor). Isabella was a villain, however, who was also, occasionally, self-effacing. A little bit bumbling. Aw, shucks, quite literally. He would later explain, of the “same level” comment: